Amazon Receipt Scam Aimed At Online Merchants

If you try to sell you wares on Amazon, watch out: A new scam out there is sending fake Amazon receipts to merchants that look convincingly like the real ones and then claiming they never received their products. GFI Software discovered the software, which is free to download on the internet.

“The free program available online allows scammers to create an HTML ‘receipt’ for phantom Amazon.com purchase,” GFI Software senior threat researcher Christopher Boyd said in a press release. “By capturing a screenshot of the fake receipt, these cyber criminals are able to email unsuspecting sellers claiming they are missing items. This type of fraud, perpetrated en masse, could result in massive losses for retailers, especially during the holiday shopping season.” (More on Time.com: 5 Online Scams To Avoid This Year)

The fake invoice even has the before tax and after tax lines, making it virtually identical to the original one. Because it’s a downloadable program, it’s not like a virus that can attack PC users – it can reach everyone. While big companies may be able to tell the difference, your average seller on Amazon might not be able to discern the difference. Boyd warns that if a customer is acting weird, make sure to double check your own Amazon invoices and with Amazon themselves to see if he or she really bought that item. He details more information on his blog, complete with screenshots of how the fake receipt generator works like the image above which is a fake receipt. It sucks not to receive a Christmas gift for a loved one on time, but it sucks more to be scammed out of one.